Here's my opinion, for what it's worth. Wet your feet with a good used recurve. You can generally get a good (maybe old, but good shooter) recurve for the same or less than a cheap longbow. I've yet to find a cheap longbow that I'd reccomend.

All wood bows have their place--I have one, compete with it, and really like it, BUT....like wood arrows, they require a bit more understanding and may be a bit more than you want to deal with starting out.

In my experience, and from talking to several selfbow fanatics, the dang things are picky and have a break-in period where the tiller may change quite a bit (rendering earlier tuning useless, maybe even requireing re-tillering).

There's a lot of great longbows on the market, and some can be had for a lot less than others, but I don't know of any I'd call both "good" and "cheap". That's coming from a guy that's shot longbows almost exclusively for the last dozen years or so.

Chad